Hubble Discovers Oldest Known Galaxy

The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.

The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.

"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.

Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.

The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")

Baby Pictures

The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."

These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.

The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)

"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."

Read More..

Fiscal Cliff Talks' Latest Victim? Sandy Relief

President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner just can't seem to break through an impasse in their "fiscal cliff" talks, increasing pessimism about a deal by Christmas and now threatening to sidetrack billions in federal aid for victims of superstorm Sandy.

After weeks of public posturing and private negotiations, both sides remain firmly dug in with their opposing positions on tax hikes and spending cuts for deficit reduction.

"The president wants to pretend spending isn't the problem," Boehner told reporters today. "That's why we don't have an agreement."

House Republicans are demanding significant changes to entitlement programs to curb spending, which Democrats flatly oppose. The White House, invoking the president's re-election and public opinion polls on its side, still insists there will be no deal without a tax-rate increase on the top 2 percent of U.S. income-earners.

"Until the Republicans realize this, are willing to do what is right, we are going nowhere," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

The gridlock on how to best reduce the deficits and debt threatens to derail another pressing piece of business at hand: the White House's $60 billion emergency-relief request for states devastated by Sandy.

Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo; Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo

How The Fiscal Cliff Is Hurting Small Business Watch Video

President Obama: 'Taxes Going Up One Way or Another' Watch Video

20 Women Senators Devise Their Own Fiscal Cliff Financial Plan Watch Video

Some Republicans are balking at the size of the request -- which was endorsed by the governors of the affected states, including New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie -- noting that its price tag would nearly wipeout any deficit savings Democrats are seeking next year by raising tax rates on the rich.

Other lawmakers have said the aid package should be offset with a fresh batch of spending cuts, which could be hashed out in committee hearings early next year. FEMA still has $5 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund, they say, enough to last until March.

Congressional leaders on both sides warned members Wednesday to prepare for a working Christmas in Washington unless a compromise can be reached soon. The "fiscal cliff" hits in 19 days, triggering a cascade of automatic tax hikes and deep spending cuts that could thrust the economy back into recession.

Obama and Boehner have traded a series of proposals over the past few days, speaking at least once by phone this week. The president lowered his desired target for new tax revenue from $1.6 trillion to $1.4 trillion; Boehner has indicated his willingness to raise more than the $800 billion he put on the table.

But the Ohio Republican said today that the two sides are nowhere near a deal.

"More than five weeks ago, Republicans signaled our willingness to avert the 'fiscal cliff' with a bipartisan agreement that is truly balanced and begins to solve our spending problem," Boehner said. "The president still has not made an offer that meets these two standards."

Obama predicted Monday that Republicans will ultimately accept tax hikes for the wealthy and signaled new willingness to make "tough" spending cuts. But he did not offer specifics.

"If the Republicans can move on that [taxes], then we are prepared to do some tough things on the spending side," Obama told ABC's Barbara Walters this week. "Taxes are going to go up one way or another. And I think the key is that taxes go up on high-end individuals."

In the event both sides cannot reach a broad deal, there is still some optimism about a last-ditch effort by both parties to prevent an income tax hike on 98 percent of earners.

Read More..

Another year wasted by climate negotiators

INTERNATIONAL climate change talks turned 18 earlier this month, but there was little sign that their wasted youth is over. The 18th annual climate change summit in Doha, Qatar, might have ended with an apparent victory for developing nations, but in reality the world is barely any nearer to facing up to its responsibilities.

First the good news. Rich countries have conceded that they should help poor countries cope with the harm they will suffer as the world warms. With dangerous climate change now almost inevitable, developing countries need this lifeline (see "Doha summit launches climate damage aid").

The agreement could have a useful knock-on effect, pressuring developed countries to take action on their own emissions. If they do not make cuts, they could ultimately face a much larger bill for damages.

But for all the fanfare, it was an agreement in principle only. The treaty signed at Doha did not establish a mechanism for compensation, or commit any money. Instead, it made a promise to set something up at next year's conference. The text thus follows a well-worn and tiresome path of procrastination.

In Bali in 2007, nations agreed to establish a binding treaty by the end of 2009. That promise was broken when the 2009 Copenhagen summit collapsed. Cancun 2010 agreed on virtually nothing except to meet again in 2011. Durban 2011 agreed to agree on a new treaty by 2015. Every year, delegates use the same tactic to give the appearance of action, but achieve nothing in practice.

In some respects, Doha was a step backwards. The biggest breakthrough in Copenhagen came when developed countries promised to give money to poor countries to help them adapt. Yet Doha saw this commitment placed on the back burner.

After the conference Edward Davey, the UK's secretary of state for energy and climate change, was harangued by a young delegate for agreeing such a feeble treaty. Davey responded that he would have liked to have done more but had to "live in the real world". His meaning is clear, but the real real world is not one of endless diplomatic quibbling. It is one of rising seas and deadly storms. The negotiations have long since lost touch with it.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

Read More..

UN court sentences Srebrenica commander to life for genocide

THE HAGUE: The UN's Yugoslav war crimes court found Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir guilty of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, and sentenced him to life in jail.

"The majority of the court finds you guilty" of crimes including genocide, judge Christoph Flugge told the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

"Zdravko Tolimir, you are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment," the judge then told the gaunt former commander, who crossed himself three times before the verdict was handed down.

The majority of the court's judges agreed with prosecutors who had asked for a life sentence, saying Tolimir, now 64, was involved in "massive" crimes committed at the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves in July 1995.

They said they were "of a massive scale, severe in (their) intensity and devastating in (their) effect."

Judges said Tolimir -- whom they called the "right-hand man and eyes and ears of (Bosnian Serb army commander) Ratko Mladic," -- who is also being tried by the court -- had overseen Bosnian Serb army officers conducting the slaughter of at least 6,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.

Conducting his own defence, Tolimir said that what happened at Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July 1995 amounted to "fighting against terrorist groups", rather than the murder of Muslim men and boys after Dutch peacekeepers at the "safe" enclave were overrun by Mladic's forces.

Tolimir, said Judge Flugge, "had full knowledge of the despicable criminal operations and himself furthered their goals," in this brutal episode in the Balkans country's bloody 1992-95 war that claimed 100,000 lives and left 2.2 million others homeless.

Apart from genocide, Tolimir was found guilty on six other counts including extermination, murder, persecution and forcible transfer.

Judges said prosecutors did not prove a count of deportation beyond reasonable doubt in relation to the attacks on Srebrenica and Zepa.

During his trial prosecutors said the former intelligence chief was part of a grand scheme to murder thousands of Muslim men and boys and expel thousands of woman and children from the enclave in order to create a "mono-ethnic Serb state."

The prosecution also alleged that about 25,000 women, children and elderly people were forcibly transferred from the enclaves to Muslim-controlled territories, while thousands of men and boys old enough to bear arms were executed and dumped in mass graves.

Tolimir was involved in a "joint criminal enterprise" to "summarily execute and bury thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys aged 16 to 60 captured from the Srebrenica enclave," according to the charge sheet.

During the trial, prosecutors said Mladic relied on Tolimir to "carry out the slow strangling of the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves" to create conditions which would force the Muslim population "to give up hope of survival."

Tolimir is the most senior Serb to have a verdict handed down by the UN war crimes court since two Croatian generals and two former Kosovar guerrillas were acquitted last month, sparking Serbia's ire.

In 2004, Radislav Krstic became the highest-ranking Bosnian Serb officer to be sentenced on appeal to 35 years in jail for his role in the Srebrenica massacre.

Arrested in May 2007 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Tolimir had seen his trial delayed several times due to ill-health.

Mladic, also dubbed "the Butcher of Bosnia," was arrested in Serbia last year, and now faces 11 counts before the same Hague-based court, including for the Srebrenica massacre.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

Samsung knocks Apple maps in Sydney marketing stunt

Samsung is apparently not keen on letting Apple's recent maps mishap in Australia go unnoticed, and is poking fun of its rival in downtown Sydney today.

CNET Australia has snapped pics of a little guerrilla marketing by Samsung featuring a muddied up vehicle with a tent and other camping supplies. Next to it is a sign that says "Oops, should have gotten a Samsung Galaxy S III. Get navigation you can trust."

The lost vehicle and signage, of course, is referring to recent incidences of people getting stranded in a wilderness area around Murray-Sunset National Park instead of the town of Mildura after searching for the latter in Apple's maps software.

Over the weekend local Australian police put out a notice, encouraging iPhone owners to rely instead on paper maps, or an alternate GPS system. The issue has since been fixed and attributed, in part, to a double listing in the national GPS database.

Samsung's poke at Apple is just the most recent marketing effort. The company has put considerable resources into a TV advertising campaign knocking Apple's devices as under-featured, and those who shop for it as out of touch.

The two companies continue to duke it out in the courtroom, with some of the fallout from the U.S. trial between that was decided in August, to be determined over the next few weeks.

Read More..

Best Space Pictures of 2012: Editor's Picks

Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal Observatory

This image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.

To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon and evening planets, then take in the Perseids meteor shower.

"We live in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, so when we gaze through the thickness of our galaxy, we see it as a band of dense star fields encircling the sky," said Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory's public astronomer and a contest judge.

Full story>>

Why We Love It

"I like the way this view of the Milky Way also shows us a compelling foreground landscape. It also hints at the astronomy problems caused by light pollution."—Chris Combs, news photo editor

Published December 11, 2012

Read More..

Oregon Mall Shooting Hero Gets Customer to Safety

A store employee at the Clackamas Town Center mall used his knowledge of the shopping complex to hustle a customer out of the building during Tuesday's shooting rampage and then twice went back inside to guide other shoppers to exits and safety.

Allan Fonseca, who works at Lancome counter in Macy's and was waiting on Jocelyn Lay when they heard shots fired about 3:30 p.m. Thinking quickly, Fonseca got her behind the counter to hide.

"We both just looked at each other and knew that this was a serious situation and it was a gunman and we both just dove down below the Lancome counter there for a little protection," Lay told "Good Morning America." "And the gunfire just kept going off."

PHOTOS: Oregon Mall Shooting

Oregon Mall Shooting: 2 Dead in Clackamas Town Center Watch Video

Oregon Mall Shooting: 'Killing of Total Strangers' Watch Video

Oregon Mall Shooting: At Least 3 People Dead Watch Video

Lay said that she began praying for the Lord to protect her and the other shoppers in the mall. She said Fonseca, as a store employee, knew exactly what to do, and she credits him as her hero.

"He said that we needed to evacuate, and he took me by the hand and took me down the escalator and out to safety," she said.

Once Fonseca was sure that she was safe, he then turned to her and said, "I'm going to go back and help other people."

Fonseca said that because he is familiar with the exits in the mall, he felt that he would be able to help shoppers escape the gunfire.

"I felt that if I knew how to get out of the mall and out to safety then I should share that knowledge with everyone else, like the shoppers that don't come here regularly and don't know all of the exits," he said. "So I decided to go back up because I wanted to see if there was anybody in panic or didn't know where to do."

Fonseca returned to the mall and evacuated the lower level of the Macy's store, and then went back up to the "shooting floor" to look for his co-workers. Lay says she's not sure she would have done if he hadn't been there to get her out of harm's way.

"I probably just would have stayed there and probably would have had a little more fear because it's one of those situations where you've seen in previous shootings, the gunman keep shooting and keep looking for different people," she said. "I would have huddled there and hoped and prayed."

Read More..

Out-of-season's greetings from the Arctic frost flowers

Joanna Carver, reporter

(Image: Matthias Wietz/IGERT/NSF)

Season's regards from an icy meadow in the Arctic, but it's no winter wonderland and please don't dash out into it. These frost flowers generally form in spring, and only on thin ice, so you'd quickly find yourself in freezing water in a sparsely populated area.

Frost flowers form in calm conditions when the atmosphere is much colder than the underlying ice. The ice vaporises into dry air and then refreezes into these beautiful frosty blossoms, which concentrate salt and bacteria from the ice.

Frost flowers might also be a source of aerosols in the polar atmosphere. Researchers at the University of Leeds, UK, suggested in 2006 that the frost flowers draw up sea salt from a brine layer just above the ice, and when the wind breaks them up, they become aerosols. It's suggested they even contribute to ozone depletion.

Lily-pad-like formations like these are common in polar regions in springtime, giving those areas a little cheer for a bit - a rest from just being the lands where it's forever winter.

Read More..

Mass protest as Michigan curbs union rights

CHICAGO: Thousands of protesters descended on Michigan's state capitol Tuesday as lawmakers prepared to pass union-curbing "right-to-work" legislation in a state seen as the heart of the labor movement.

The measure would weaken unions by allowing workers who get the same wages and benefits as union members to decline to pay any union dues.

Democratic lawmakers begged their Republican colleagues not to pass the controversial bill, which they warned would unleash deep social and political strife.

"There will be blood. There will be repercussions," state representative Douglass Geiss told the chamber.

Geiss reminded his colleagues of the violent clashes that accompanied the struggle to form unions in the 1930s and warned that people feel just as strongly about solidarity today.

"If ten people walk in and say I'm not going to pay dues anymore, there's going to be fights," he warned.

State representative John Switlaski lashed out at the fact Republicans were pushing the bill through in a lame duck session using a parliamentary maneuver that limits debate and means Democrats can't stop it unless they regain control in the 2014 election.

"The next two years are going to be terrible. They're going to be ugly," Switlaski said.

"I think we should pause and take a step back... let the people have a say. we'll vote for it. Put it on the ballot."

Republican state representative Lisa Lyons insisted the law was about giving workers their constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of association.

"We are witnessing history in the making," she said. "This is the day that Michigan freed its workers."

Boos and chants of "veto" poured into the chamber from the gallery after the House voted 58-51 to pass the bill, sending it to Governor Rick Snyder for final approval.

Hundreds of union members and supporters crowded into the capitol dome, blowing whistles and chanting "the people are united" and "What's disgusting? Union busting!"

Thousands more shivered in the cold outside, television news footage showed.

"The right-wing forces in Michigan are trying to take power away from working families," United Auto Workers union chief Bob King told reporters.

"They want working families to have less income, less security. This is about partisanship, not bringing the state together."

Currently, the state operates a "closed shop" policy that requires workers who profit from collective bargaining to pay fees but does not make it mandatory for them to become union members.

The right-to-work law creates an incentive for people not to join the union in what is known as the "free rider" problem because it allows them to benefit from collective bargaining without paying for it.

Snyder insists the law is necessary "to maintain our competitive edge" and attract new jobs, especially after neighboring Indiana became the 23rd US state to enact right-to-work legislation earlier this year.

But while business may profit from weakening unions, the real motivation for lawmakers is political, said Roland Zullo, a labor relations expert at the University of Michigan.

"This whole right-to-work thing is retribution," Zullo told AFP. "It's really about the fact that unions in Michigan were very important actors in helping to elect Democrats this last election."

Unions are a key source of financial and grassroots get-out-the-vote support for President Barack Obama's Democrats, and he was quick to slam the controversial bill in an appearance at Michigan auto plant Monday.

"You know, these so-called right-to-work laws -- they don't have to do with economics: they have everything to do with politics," Obama told a cheering crowd of unionized workers.

"What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money."

-AFP/ac

Read More..

Sony launches new entertainment app for Xperia users

Sony is launching an app aimed at Xperia smartphone users that grants access to additional music, film, and sports content.

Sony Mobile Communications, a subsidiary of Japanese electronics maker Sony, announced today that a new app, called the Xperia Lounge, has been released in beta. Available on Google's
Android operating system, Xperia Lounge contains "backstage" content based around music, film, gaming, and sports.

Touted as a "VIP" experience, the free app is launching with content from band Coldplay and a competition to win tickets to see Swedish House Mafia. It will later include a chance to attend FIFA events. Content is provided by Sony's partners and sponsors, and includes live concert streaming, behind the scenes film footage, and song streaming.

The application is available from Google Play.

If you don't own an Xperia phone, you can still download the free app, but you won't be able to access all streaming services or content. The Xperia Lounge app will be available in 11 languages.

Sony Mobile has released a number of different Xperia smartphone models, including the Xperia T, Xperia J, and Xperia V. The Sony Xperia TL, available now on AT&T, may be one model that can stand up to competitors including Apple and Samsung, as it comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, and a 13-megapixel camera.

Read More..